WP2 Final Draft

Rachel Zhang
WRT 9:00-10:50
Literacy Practices in Academic Community: ASAM 1

Are you still facing the dilemma of choosing courses during three pass times? ASAM 1 is

an excellent curriculum for universities students. It is worth taking this general education course

since UCSB undergraduates can both fulfill the education requirement: American History and

institutions, Ethnicity, and Area D, and learn more about the history of Asian American.

According to professor Lisa Sun-Hee Park, “To do this, strong critical analytical skills are

required”(ASAM 1 Syllabus). The primary audience of this course at UCSB must be college

students who acquire a high level of education. To reach the goal of getting students to get

familiar with Asian American History and to acknowledge the diversity of different ethnic

groups in this academic community, professor assigns reading assignments of three required

texts and checks students’ capability of understanding the materials through three exams.

The course title of ASAM 1, which called “Introduction to Asian American History,

1850-present”, has already contributed a brief description of the subject covered. According to

the syllabus, the professor would like to show some various experiences of some Asian

populations in America rather than requiring us to remember the events years, as we were in

High school. The professor wants students to know more about Asian Americans story, for

instance, how they survive in the war, and get the ideas of different influence that wars have

brought to them. Further, it has limited the time into 1850 to present so that some of us may be

familiar with some stories, for instance, the Vietnam War, and would love to dig deeper into

those events.
 The professor adopted several literacy practices to reach her goal for the course. Reading

assignments have been presented in the course outline of the syllabus as students check their

assignments every week to keep up with the ideas that will appear in lectures and other

assignments. Since we have one summary assignment every week and three exams which each

takes place in every three weeks, it is crucial to go over reading materials for the exam

preparation. These required texts serve as a bridge between students and the teaching goal of the

curriculum by not only helping students to improve their grades but also by allowing them to

understand the content of the books and backgrounds of those historical events.

The course requires audiences to read three books during the quarter. The first source

from the discipline is a narrative called “Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San

Francisco’s Chinatown by Nayan Shah”(Shah, Nayan. Contagious Divides). While some

students may wonder why the first assignment is a narrative, it is clear that this narrative may

help to generate students’ interests in controversial issues of race, immigration, and sex. Two

class classifications—cabin passengers(Whites) and steerage(Asians) passengers—were treated

differently by medical staff. Chinese were identified as a filthy and unscrupulous race with

unhygienic habits due to the narrow living arrangements of Chinese immigrants and other events

during the nineteenth century. Chinese women were seen as prostitutes as they were regarded as

a threat to both social order and public health. Though the summary of these information sounds

like the contents that may frustrate you, the author tends to reach a wider audience. By inserting

pictures of Chinese Immigrants and maps of San Francisco Chinese Colony, Shah makes the

book more engaging for students. With regard to the professor’s goal, by assigning this book, she

hopes that her students will the historical facts through stories and that they will be able to
discuss the history of Asian Americans and see the gradual change of Chinese communities in

America.

The second reading is called “Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(es)

by Yen Le Espiritu”(Espiritu, Yen Le. Body Counts). The audience for this book includes not

only students but also scholars as it is a piece of academic writing. In contrast to the previous

book “Contagious Divides,” the author of Body Counts has a more formal tone to make her

arguments. Besides, she mentioned in the introduction that she has conducted several pieces of

research, and uses abundant evidence to support her arguments within the book. Knowing it as

academic writing, professor Park assigns Body Counts to balance the narratives. Also, she

connects Espiritu’s book with a film she played recording Vietnamese American who were

assimilated under American culture, went back home and realized how their ancestors suffered

from great loss. By allowing students to see how distinct scholarly writing, narratives, and films

approach authors’ ideas related to Asian American History, Professor Park effectively helps

students to generate different perspectives on the Vietnam War.

The third book also belongs to the genre of academic writing, and it is called Impossible

Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects).

Impossible Subjects uses the histories of Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino people as

examples to tell readers about the origins of the term “Illegal Aliens” and how illegal

immigration originated. It is a wonderful resource for both college students and scholars. Like

other scholarly works, this book has an introduction that not only provides audiences with a

background of the term “illegal aliens,” but also summarizes Ngai’s main argument. It effectively

avoids readers to be distracted from descriptions of different events. To prove her arguments, the

author provides some line charts, a type of chart that used to display trends over time, in the book
to show the population of both immigrants that voluntarily left America and immigrants that

were expelled from the United States. Further, it has section headings in each chapter. Readers

like students can grasp writers’ thoughts from that little title and understand the main ideas of the

book easily. This book also has its main argument that the term “illegal aliens” exists for reasons.

Though Ngai’s book does not have an independent session called the "main idea”, we can still

grasp her ideas behind those stories and facts, since it is strongly related to the idea of the course.

One of the classmates states that “In this book, Ngai provides some very detailed historical

contents related to three different groups of immigrants. I never read most of those stories until

taking this class”(James). Ngai has made clear and highly specific introductions for students to

interpret those events.

Both the instructor and the author of Body Counts use particular vocabularies during

lecture and in books. They use jargon and analyze the nuances compared to the literal meanings

of words with historical events. For instance, “Good Refugee”(Espiritu, Yen Le. Body Counts) is

an important term in chapter 4 of Body Counts: The Vietnam War and Miliratarized Refuge(es)

by Espiritu, Yen Le. The term was formed during the Vietnam War and referred to Vietnamese

American who were assimilated by American’s culture and who believed their dream could come

true in the United States. They believed they were better off to the United States compared with

their lives in Vietnam. And their thoughts were captured by the U.S government and helped to

depict a great image of the United States. Therefore, they were called “good refugee.” Such lexis

may only be understood by scholars who already knew the background of the events or high-

educated students who have read Espiritu’s book.

To make sure that students grasped the concepts from three required reading assignments,

students are asked to take Three exams which comprise heavy percentage of overall grades.
Unlike some exams from other courses, our professor hates to offer 30-40 multiple-choice

questions. Instead, Each of the exams consists of identification and short answer questions. For

instance, professor Park has asked a question related to Espiritu’s book. According to question 8

in exam 3, “Espiritu argues that we have ‘memory practices’ that retell the story of the past.

Provide an example of such a practice and how it works”(AS AM 1 MT 3). To answer this

question, students have to get familiar with the Vietnam War, and examples mentioned, for

example, the history of the name of city Saigon in Espiritu’s book. It is difficult for students to

remember the background of key facts, provide many details, and express their thoughts if they

have not listened to lectures or read the books. People who fail the first exam may be encouraged

to focus more on the course materials, on the one hand. On the other hand, those who get good

grades will build more confidence in learning the course and may generate deeper thoughts about

the history of Asian American. One of the classmates that I interviewed, James, believes that

and states, “The most impressive part is my first exam. I score a 90 percent on my first exam, and

I think it’s well deserved since I study a lot for it. I learned a lot from this course”(James).

Therefore, the exams arrangement may be perfect for students since it allows students to give

feedbacks of what they reviewed on the exams and develop their interests in Asian American

studies.

In conclusion, the literacy practices designed for this class are completely vital to

students who take ASAM 1. Instead of one, professor Park assigns different types of literacy

practices as readings to encourage students to gain new insights into events within those books.

She also helps students to combine those ideas by incorporating questions from reading

assignments into exams. Through the process, the professor can successfully reach her teaching
goals of making students get familiar with Asian American History, and may strongly help to

develop racial justice at UCSB.


 Work Cited

ASAM1 Syllabus.pdf - University of California Santa Barbara AS AM 1 Introduction to Asian

American History 1850 Present Winter 2018, www.coursehero.com/file/28336484/
ASAM1-W18-Syllabuspdf/.

Espiritu, Yen Le. Body Counts: the Vietnam War and Militarized Refuge(Es). University of
California Press, 2014.

Ngai, Mae M. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton
University Press, 2014.

Shah, Nayan. Contagious Divides Epidemics and Race in San Francisco’s Chinatown. Univ. of
California Press, 2011.

AS AM 1 MT 3. Quizlet, quizlet.com/171996851/as-am-1-mt-3-flash-cards/.